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NCAAB Picks

NCAA Basketball Picks: Eastern Washington +8 vs. Washington

The Huskies have still yet to lose this season, but they're likely to face a challenge from in-state competitor Eastern Washington this evening. How can we best take advantage of the NCAA basketball lines?

Odds Overview
As of now, the Huskies are favored by nine points in our NCAA basketball odds. They've still yet to lose once this season and odds makers are showing them love as a result.

Should we expect a lot of points tonight? Perhaps, as we see a total of 146.5 put on the board. Why so high? Well, Eastern Washington, surprise surprise, has been one of the most lethal offensive teams in the nation. As crazy as it sounds, the Eagles are averaging 85.0 points per contest.

Washington Huskies
The Huskies are sitting pretty at 7-0 overall this season. They haven't had the most difficult of schedules, but that being said, they did manage an outstanding win over San Diego State in their most recent taste of action.

Points were extremely hard to come by against the Aztecs, but ultimately Washington stood form to win 49-36. They were all over San Diego State, holding their ranked foes to an unheard of 20.4 percent from the floor. That's as low of a field goal percentage as we've seen in quite some time.

For Washington, Andrew Andrews and Nigel Williams-Goss were the main guys, as they combined for 28 of the team's 49 points. It didn't matter that the Huskies shot a mere 37.5 percent from the field, considering San Diego State wasn't hitting anything at all. So while it wasn't the prettiest of victories, you have to give a lot of credit to the Huskies for making life difficult.

Washington has only played three games at home and they've had little trouble thus far. Their defense has been what's guided them to the spotless 7-0 record, and it's sure going to be tested to its limit by the visiting Eagles tonight.

Eastern Washington Eagles
You may not know much about the Eagles, so let us help you a bit.

This team has proven to be quite a handful so far this season. Eastern Washington is 8-1 on the year, with the team's one loss coming to a then-ranked SMU team on the road. The Eagles' best win came over Indiana on the road a couple days after that one defeat to the Mustangs.

It's proven tough to stop this Eastern Washington offense from enforcing its will. That's because the tandem of Venky Jois and Tyler Harvey has been fantastic all season long. Jois is averaging 21.1 PPG and 8.4 RPG on the year, while Harvey has been good for 20.4 PPG, 3.9 RPG and 3.7 APG. Throw in Ognjen Miljkovic, who's going for 13.3 PPG, and you can see why this team has been performing so well.

Can the Eagles keep it going in a very tough matchup with the Huskies? Only time will tell for this one-loss Eastern Washington squad.

Nonetheless, we really like what Eastern Washington has done as well, and we think they'll be able to make life difficult on the home team in this spot. It's a very interesting clash of styles here, with a top offense going up against a formidable defense, which tends to make it tricky to decipher the best value.

With two guys in Jois and Harvey that can score seemingly at will, we look for the Eagles to be worth backing with your NCAA basketball picks. It's going to take a lot to win straight up against these undefeated Huskies, but Eastern Washington should be able to notch a cover as significant dogs.